Cory - I'm not commenting on your personal experience in any way at all. How could I - I don't know anything about it. I find it odd that you think I am. I was talking about other people - my post makes that very clear. I was trying to find an explanation why your neighbor might be so evangelical in her attitudes (I'm not excusing her tactlessness). I'm glad that you had optimal care in labour, but it's simply not the case with many of the mothers I come into contact with.
And it's really, really not about telling mothers how they 'should' feel about the birth they had. I'm delighted if someone comes out from a caesarean following a failed ventouse and forceps birth still smiling, happy and content. Brilliant. And I did make the point that I never comment on the care that they've had unless people directly ask me what I think.
But when you know about what constitutes good care you do feel downhearted when you know that many of the the things the midwives do on the labour ward contravene the hospitals own protocols, let alone the rules of 'best practice' - I know this because I'm familiar with the hospital and the way things work there, but the mothers generally don't. They put all their trust and confidence in their midwife, and there's no denying that most of the midwives are extremely kind and very hard working. But many of them are really not up to date with their practice and are not providing the sort of care that gives women the best chance of having an uncomplicated birth.
I could give you so many examples - of low risk women left on monitors for hours and hours, of women told that they can't get off the bed if they're being monitored, of women denied epidurals when they're 7cm dilated because it's 'too late', or conversely of midwives positively badgering them to use pethidine, of women routinely giving birth lying on their backs with their legs in stirrups, or being denied access to the birth pools or the birth centre for the most trivial of reasons, of coached valsalva pushing (which results in longer second stages and a greater likelyhood of fetal distress), of the majority of women being bullied into using formula because their baby hasn't fed within 4 hours of birth.
And by the way - it's not just me thinking these things. The senior midwives at the hospital and local bf counsellors also completely exasperated with some of the things that happen at the hospital.
And women can be as intelligent as you like, but they still get rail-roaded into things that are not right for them and not what they want, because that's what happens in labour. I had a doctor in my class who was pushed into giving formula to her baby in hospital even though she said she knew at one level it wasn't necessary, but she said all her confidence deserted her after the birth because she was so frightened about her baby being ill. Being well informed or otherwise is neither here nor there.
I'd never tell anyone how they should feel about their births. Nothing I've said in my posts suggests that I do this or that I think it's ok that other people do it. I can't see how on earth you can make a comparison with what I've said about the care women get in our local hospital and paternalistic attitudes towards natural birth.